Do Haredim Deserve the Right to a Functional Modern Education in Israel? (and in the U.S.A.)

A lawsuit argues that men and women who left the
ultra-Orthodox world without basic math, history, and language knowledge
to live secular lives were neglected by the state. The state counters
that it’s the parents’ fault.

It was radio that rescued Haim Rubinstein from the ultra-Orthodox world.

As a 13-year-old boy growing up in the religious Tel Aviv suburb of
Bnei Brak, Rubinstein would surreptitiously listen to talk radio using
earphones he hid under his pillow. “I would tune into a program for
teenagers, where kids would talk about their fights with girlfriends or
parents. Through the program I was exposed to the lives of secular
children,” he recalled recently. “Radio saved my life.”

By the age of 16, Rubinstein had left his prestigious yeshiva in
Jerusalem, and started managing the online chatroom of a Tel Aviv radio
station. Fearful that he was on his way to abandoning his religious
lifestyle entirely, his parents put him on a plane to England, where
more-liberal yeshivas were available. “At the time, I couldn’t count to
10 in English,” he remembered. “I boarded a plane for the first time,
but the stewardess couldn’t speak any Hebrew, and I was unable to ask
for a cup of water. My frustration was immense. I remained thirsty for
the entire five-hour flight.”

Today, Rubinstein is determined to be compensated for his lack of
secular education. Math classes at his yeshiva terminated at long
division, and he never studied English, geography, civics, or history.
The long school days were typically filled with Talmud and bible
classes. Now, at 28, Rubinstein is the spokesman of Out for Change, a nonprofit created in 2013 to lobby for ex-Haredi Israelis finding their way in the secular world.

In late 2015, Out for Change filed a landmark damages lawsuit for 4
million shekels ($1 million) against the state of Israel, on behalf of
52 young men and women who left the ultra-Orthodox world and struggle to
find a decent job or make up their lost years of math and English. They
argue that the state had neglected to enforce its core curriculum in
ultra-Orthodox schools, depriving them of a basic right to useful
education.

Surprisingly, the state responded with a third-party lawsuit against
the plaintiffs’ parents and educational institutions, claiming they bear
responsibility for any such harm, “if it indeed occurred.” After all,
the state argued, the parents could have sent their children to
non-Orthodox public institutions.

Ultra-Orthodox schools in Israel are budgeted proportionately based
on the existence of a “core curriculum” in civics, English, history,
mathematics, literature, Hebrew and Bible. Schools that teach the full
core curriculum receive 100 percent budgeting. The majority of
ultra-Orthodox schools—known as “recognized but unofficial”—receive 75
percent budgeting based on the assumption of 75 percent compliance.
Private schools, where no education-ministry oversight exists and no
core curriculum is taught, nevertheless received 55 percent government
funding. According to Education Minister Naftali Bennett, some 40,000
students study in such institutions.

Haim Rubinstein at age 13, and today

For nearly two decades, Israel’s secular parties have attempted to
introduce the core curriculum in Haredi schools, with limited success.
In 1999, MK Yosef Paritzky of the Shinui party filed a claim to the
supreme court against the ministry of education, demanding it set a
minimum number of class hours for secular studies. The court ruled that
government budgets can only be allocated to schools that teach a core
curriculum, but the status quo remained. The 2003 Dovrat Committee and
the 2011 Trachtenberg Committee of 2011 also stressed the importance of a
broad education, but to little avail. The final attempt came in 2013,
when Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, passed the
“core-curriculum law,” reducing the funding of recalcitrant primary
schools from 55 percent to 35 percent (starting in 2018). Lapid’s law
was annulled by his successor Naftali Bennett, who reclaimed full
discretion in allocating budgets to schools.

“So what about the 40,000 [students] who don’t study the core
curriculum?” asked Bennett in a Facebook post last year. “That’s a tough
question and there are no magic solutions. … I believe that with no
noise and no legislation we’ll see progress. When over 90 percent of
ultra-Orthodox (who do study some core subjects) will receive
high-quality education and jobs, more and more Haredim will join.”
***

But what of the thousands of ultra-Orthodox men and women who wish to
join Israel’s high-tech job market now but have no qualifications?
According to Out for Change, the government has allocated some 200
million shekels ($52.5 million) to programs geared at bridging the
educational gap for Haredim interested in academic studies. But Israelis
who left the ultra-Orthodox world fall between the cracks, ineligible
for most of the make-up programs. After three years of military service,
Rubinstein applied for a grant to the preparatory school of Ono College
outside Tel Aviv. To his surprise, his interviewer asked him whether he
observed the Sabbath and prayed every day. His ultra-Orthodox
counterparts enter such programs en masse, no questions asked, and are
normally younger, having not served in the army. “I want to be a
productive citizen. How does the state expect me to become one?” he
wondered.

Disheartened by the exorbitant price of private tutoring, Rubinstein
never went back to school. He taught himself how to read English by
listening to the loudspeaker on the London Underground, comparing the
station names to the ones written on the map he held.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, some 17,000
Israelis between the ages of 20 and 40 report having left the
ultra-Orthodox world, and now share Rubinstein’s plight (I am informed that the real numbers are much higher). Moshe Shenfeld,
who abandoned his religious lifestyle and established Out for Change,
claims that trend is only increasing; the average dropout rate is 10
percent, or at least 1,300 annually (Only those that do so publicly).

While insisting that the purpose of the lawsuit is not to force
ultra-Orthodox schools to introduce secular studies, Shenfeld
nevertheless believes that if accepted, it will obligate the state to
reexamine the far-reaching autonomy it grants the schools. “The idea is
not that generation after generation of children don’t study and then
are compensated. Everyone loses that way,” he insisted. “We want there
to be an easy and organized way to make up the gap.”

What gives this claim special force is that Israel is obligated to
institute secular studies not only by its own education laws but as a
signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
outlines the minimum requirements of school education. Institutions that
received threatening lawsuit warnings from the state last fall have
already begun hinting to plaintiffs that their siblings, still
registered in the schools, may be harmed by their decision to confront
the state. But Shenfeld said that only eight of the 52 original
plaintiffs have withdrawn their names as a result.

Shenfeld, 32, began his own voyage toward secularism 12 years ago at
the National Library in Jerusalem, where he took interest in old books
on biblical criticism. “I was educated to be religious not by default
but because it’s the proper way of life,” he recalled. “If other people
only listened to us, I was told, they would be convinced that we’re
right.”It was a verse in the Book of Judges, a book he scarcely read in
yeshiva, that shattered his religious worldview. Following the death of
Joshua, chapter two recounts, a new generation emerged in the Land of
Israel, which was unaware of exodus from Egypt. That text seemed to
contradict the Jewish belief in a contiguous tradition of revelation
from Mount Sinai to the present day. “I caught them telling a serious
lie,” he said. “This meant I couldn’t believe a whole bunch of things
I’d never closely examined.”

Shenfeld completed his matriculation exams on his own, served in the
army, and completed a triple-major degree at Hebrew University in
physics, mathematics and computer sciences, fully funded by a grant for
academic excellence. Today, he works as a programmer with Mobileye, a
Jerusalem-based high-tech company specializing in driver-assistance
systems, while mastering the details of his legal battle against the
state with Talmudic precision.

While Shenfeld’s stellar career track may be exceptional for
ex-Haredis, but his motivation to succeed at all costs isn’t, claims
Rubinstein, the organization’s spokesman. “The media loves stories about
poor, pitiful ex-Haredis, but that is simply not true,” he said.
“People who left that world are strong people who break boundaries.
Otherwise, they would have remained in that cozy world. We got out,
transformed our lives, and the country should invest in us.”

For Shenfeld, a Talmudic parable best exemplifies his mission. It is
the story of Honi ha-Me’agel, who met an elderly man planting a carob
tree that would take 70 years to bear fruit. “Why are you bothering with
a tree whose fruit you’ll never enjoy?” Honi asked. “I’m doing it for
my grandson,” the elderly man answered.

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